"As through his breast, the wave of life
Heaved gently to and fro."
A few moments more, and I was alone with the dead.
We buried Winthrop by the side of Endicott W., and the old pastor was soon laid beside them. * * * *
Years have passed since then, and I still love to visit those three graves. But other feelings mingle with those which once possessed my soul. I hear those whose high vocation was once deemed a sure guarantee for their purity, either basely calumniated, or terribly condemned. Their morality is questioned, their sincerity doubted, their usefulness denied, and their pretensions scoffed at. It may be that unholy hands are sometimes laid upon the ark, and that change of times forbids such extensive usefulness as was in the power of the clergymen of New England in former days. But when there comes a muttering cry of "Down with the priesthood!" and a denial of the good which they have effected, my soul repels the insinuation, as though it were blasphemy. I think of the first three pastors of our village, and I reverence the ministerial office and its labors,
"If I but remember only,
That such as these have lived, and died."
Susanna.
